Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

SquigglyCrunch Beginners follows a young man from three different points in his life: when he's a little boy, when he was taking care of his sick father, and after his father has died. Most every performance in the movie is great. Ewan McGregor is great as the son struggling with what he should do at basically every moment of the movie, and Christopher Plummer as his sick father is convincing in how lost his character can be. Mélanie Laurent is probably my favorite performance. She plays a quirky, lovable character while still maintaining a level of necessary depth. The way the characters are written is really effective. The two leads, McGregor and Laurent, have a really authentic relationship all throughout the movie, and same with McGregor and Plummer. The dialogue is well-written and the way the story is presented proves to be an interesting, but effective, way of doing it. Not only that, but McGregor and Laurent have really good chemistry together. They play off each other so well, adding to the authenticity of their relationship. Overall Beginners is a great movie. With a solid cast, writing and directing, and even a good soundtrack, this is certainly one not worth missing. In the end I would recommend this movie.

ElMaruecan82 There is one truth that Mike Mills' "Beginners" quietly and patiently explores, which is that many people know exactly who they are, what they want and even what they need to be happy, and yet, for some reason, never try to fulfill these very needs, lacking courage, honesty or maybe is the act of recognition significant enough not to move forward? Either ways, they are their own collateral damages.Or maybe I'm looking at the half-empty glass, and the message of "Beginners" is that it's never too late to start a new life and make your dreams come true. But tone-wise, I'm not sure the film is an invitation for optimism, there are a few shades of happiness in a few episodes of the father's life but the main feeling is one of a big waste of time for pointless misunderstandings. Indeed, there are many moments in "Beginners" when you don't exactly know why things have escalated so negatively, except if you accept that some happy events can reveal sadder truths and vice versa.But I'm talking too abstractly and make the film sound like some philosophical essay. "Beginners" is actually based on Mike Mills' life, for what it's worth, but we're all free to tell our stories and this one has a catching set-up. Mills' parents were born in the 20's, they belonged to generation where family and love where conditioned by very strict and specific archetypes. After his mother's death in the 90's, his father revealed that he was gay ever since he was married, and the couple lived and built a family on that secret. The father lived a few years in an openly gay life before succumbing to cancer. Now, the question is why did he wait such a long time to come out of the closet?It is a legitimate question because in the 80's and 90's, people embraced homosexuality and let's face it, a man who's interested in men can never be a proper lover to his wife, so why preventing her from a satisfying sexual life? The movie doesn't give direct answers but we see the effects this life made of secrets and lies had on the son: Oliver (Ewan McGregor), a perpetually malcontent artist, incapable to live relationships to their terms. He doesn't drink or do drugs, he has a steady job and a nice apartment, but somewhat he seems incapable to get over a constant state of dissatisfaction. And the film is as much about his sadness (the word sad is quite recurring) than about his father's happiness."Beginners" is made of three intersected stories, one about Oliver's childhood where he spent most of the time with his mother, a free-spirited unconventional woman with some weird habits like pretending to shoot Oliver so he acts dead, Hal's cancer-stricken twilight of life, and his death's aftermath with Oliver trying to pull himself together and find a girl in his life. The only link to his father is his memories and a cute Jack Russell terrier named Arthur, a dog who talks in subtitles and seems to know the hidden truths about Oliver; a little gimmick not overused enough to undermine the film's realism.The story swings back and forth between these time-lines and the only real bits of happiness belong to Hal, this is a man who totally found himself at 75, and lived the last four years of his life to the fullest. Maybe it's because he knew more than anyone the burden of secrecy that he could finally implode all his repressed feelings and lived a life of joy. But again, why wait until you become a frail old man? Maybe it took the marriage to know exactly what went wrong and try to fix it, and maybe it's because Oliver doesn't know what's wrong with him that the situations seems more hopeless. The film is like a time travel in different societies, each one with its own approach to happiness, marriage and priorities. Oliver's parents belonged to a time where war was a priority, where having a house and a job wasn't to be taken for granted, where people fought for their rights. Oliver and Anna, his French love interest, played by Mélanie Laurent, had everything served on a silver platter, they're open-minded, but they never experienced privations and repressions, and perhaps, this is what goes wrong with our whole generation, if we knew what we were missing, we would know what we need.Oliver doesn't know how to be happy, but this isn't a caprice of some sort, it's a true disability to share and communicate. And I guess the point that "Beginners" tries to make is that we can't experience the exhilaration of something without having lived in its core its absence. When Oliver lives some joyful instants with his father, it's maybe to make up for the lack of warmth that structured his childhood, having a father that is finally true to himself, paved the way to a new life, even for him. Mike Mills would also reveal that his father's coming out opened a whole new perspective in his life and created an even richer relationship with his father.And without Hal, it's up to Oliver to find out what kind of life he wants to build, and the existential block he goes through is like suspending dots… we can provide answers but we know the right mindset to have. "Beginners" is an interesting existential movie that proves that sometimes, happiness is about filling gaps, but one must have to experience these gaps to identify them, that's the catch. The film's minimalist format and the great performances especially from Christopher Plummer makes it easier to follow, but sometimes, the film is victim of its tricky subject.Indeed, if the feeling of wasted time and boredom reflects the viewer's opinion, it might be because the film worked way too well for its own good.

grantss Some good comedic and dramatic moments but generally quite dull.A 38-year old graphic designer, Oliver (played by Ewan McGregor), is dealing with the death, from cancer, of his father, Hal (Christopher Plummer). Four years earlier Oliver's mother, Georgia (Mary Page Keller) died, also of cancer. Georgia's death was the catalyst for Hal coming out as gay, and finding a boyfriend. Oliver meets a French actress, Anna (Melanie Laurent), and they start a relationship. It's not smooth sailing though.Very uneven. Some good, quirkily funny, moments, especially involving the dog, who seems to get all the best lines (!). Also some good dramatic moments, especially those dealing with grief and how Oliver uses sketches to show his feelings.Unfortunately, these moments are few and far between. For the most part the movie meanders around, not finding a purpose or momentum. The scenes involving Oliver and Anna get bogged down in drawn-out soap opera-ish melodrama and always kill off any spark that might have appeared before. The ending is a damp squib.Can't fault the performances. The highlight is Christopher Plummer as Hal. He was perfect for the role, providing a great mix of sensitivity and passion. Plummer won Best Supporting Actor at the 2012 Oscars, his first and (to date) only Oscar. At 82 he became the oldest winner of a competitive Oscar.

slinkoff People in the future will look back on films like this that rate so well and think, "what the hell did people like about that?". It is mediocre, trivial, slight and these days almost a self-parody of the artsy type of movie with the plinky-plonky music and the scenes where everything is so subtle it forgets to actually happen.I like interesting stories. This is just a story. And I mean "just".The characters aren't all that interesting and what they are doing and feeling is not all that interesting either. This kind of cinema seems to want to tap into what it's like to be a human and to have complicated feelings and mixed up memories and it's just not very profound or special or enlightening and it definitely isn't very entertaining.Perhaps to like this kind of film depends on where you are with your own perceptions of the world or perhaps you just like having what you yourself feel, affirmed on screen and you see that as something that makes a film great, but I personally don't. I want some excitement, some interest, something I wasn't expecting, something to make me think or really feel, something profound or even something alien and unusual or eccentric, bombastic or beautiful. But this? This is pedestrian, lethargic, sometimes painful and ultimately just dull. Dull, normal, people with nothing really going on, just like nearly everyone you know. I don't want to go to the cinema to see or feel this. This is just life. I get it. I know it already. Give me some escapism please or at least some characters or a story better than this.